President Bush pauses while speaking on the budget to members of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007 in Lancaster, Pa.

Bush said it's important for the United States to stay engaged in neighboring Iraq to convince the Iranians that the U.S. is committed to democratic reform in the region. "There would be nothing worse for world peace than if the Iranians believed that the United States did not have the will and commitment to help young democracies survive," Bush told businessmen and women where he took questions after a talk on government spending.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday vetoed a measure to expand a popular children's health care program, launching the first in a series of major battles with Democrats over domestic spending.

The legislation would have provided an extra $35 billion over five years for the health program, which is administered by the states. Taxes on tobacco products would have been raised to pay for the increase.

France's foreign minister called on the European Union to take the lead in widening financial sanctions on Iran, insisting the world could not afford to wait for U.N. action to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner gestures during a news conference at the French embassy in Amman Septemper 12, 2007. Kouchner has urged European Union counterparts to study widening existing sanctions on Iran's banking sector over its nuclear program before any new U.N. resolution against Tehran.

Bernard Kouchner last month sparked controversy by saying the world should prepare for a war with Iran and the Islamic republic summoned France's charge d'affaires in Tehran on Wednesday to protest about his "extreme" remarks.

KIEV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called Wednesday for a broad coalition including pro-Western and pro-Russian parties following the weekend's tense parliamentary election.

Yushchenko said in a televised statement that he had instructed "all" parties "to start provisional political consultations on the formation of a majority in the Ukrainian parliament and formation of a government."

Gordon Brown has lost his campaign to prevent President Robert Mugabe from attending a Europe-Africa summit in Portugal in December despite the EU travel ban on the Zimbabwean strongman.

The prime minister is also facing stiff resistance to his demand that the EU appoint a special envoy to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis, according to sources in Brussels. "It's the working assumption that Mugabe will be coming if invited by the Portuguese as expected," said a European Commission official familiar with the preparations for the first Europe-Africa summit in seven years.

Gordon Brown yesterday set the stage to announce a November 1 general election on Tuesday next week as a poisonous row erupted between the two parties over the prime minister's decision to fly to Iraq in the middle of the Tory conference.

In a surprise intervention that had not been cleared with David Cameron, the former prime minister Sir John Major accused Mr Brown of breaking his promise to end "a decade of spin and deceit" by travelling to Baghdad to announce the withdrawal of 1,000 British troops by Christmas, breaking his commitment to tell parliament next week.

VIENNA - A second suspect has been arrested in connection with an attempted bomb attack against the US embassy in Vienna, Austrian police said Tuesday.

Police said the man was arrested near Vienna on the basis of information given by the main suspect, a 42-year-old Bosnian, who was detained Monday after he tried to enter the US embassy with a rucksack containing nails and explosives.

Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security services who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet with refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound. He was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security officers stopped him.

North Korea has agreed to provide a complete list of its nuclear programmes and disable the facilities at its main Yongbyon reactor complex by December 31 under US supervision, according to a six-nation agreement released Wednesday.

The deal -- the second phase of a long-running process aimed at ending the North's atomic weapons drive -- came following talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, which wrapped up at the weekend.

The UN envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, finally got to see the regime's two top generals yesterday, after days of delays and diversions.

He had flown to the country on Saturday as the army threatened overwhelming force to stifle weeks of peaceful protest against the junta and its catastrophic economic policies. He met Senior General Than Shwe and Deputy Senior General Maung Aye together at their hideaway capital of Nay Pyi Daw, 350km (217miles) north of Rangoon.

They're already predicting, mathematically, what you'll want to watch, what you'll want to wear, and who you'll want to vote for. Obviously, the next step is for computers to read your mind - and that's just what they're working toward at Tufts University in Boston.

Your computer won't be picking up details about your plans for the evening anytime soon. But researchers with the Human Computer Interaction group at Tufts have, thanks to a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, come up with a straightforward way for your computer to tell if you are overworked, under-worked or not working at all, according to a paper they will present next week at an Association of Computing Machinery symposium.

Palmdale, California - Carrying signs and chanting, about 60 people protested in front of Knight High School on Friday over the arrests of three students and a parent after a scuffle with school security officers over a spilled birthday cake.

One security guard twisted the arm of 16-year-old Pleajhai Mervin behind her back and slammed her against a lunch table, fracturing her wrist, parents said.

The Pentagon will incorporate counter-measures in its next major missile defense test for the first time in years, after a successful intercept last week, the general who heads the program said Tuesday.

Critics of the system have long contended the interceptor's so-called "kill vehicle" could easily be spoofed with simple decoys because of the difficulty of distinguishing a warhead from other objects in space.

After a successful test last week, the tracking radars and interceptor rockets of a new American missile defense system can be turned on at any time to respond to an emerging crisis in Asia, senior military officers said Tuesday.

Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., the senior commander for defense of United States territory, said that the antimissile system could guard against the risk of ballistic missile attack from North Korea even while development continues on a series of radars in California and the Pacific Ocean and on interceptor missiles in Alaska and California.

The White House no longer views Britain as its most loyal ally in Europe since Gordon Brown took office and is instead increasingly turning towards France and Germany, according to Bush administration sources.

US president George W Bush and French president Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is seen by many as the man Bush can best do business with in Europe.

What the nation needs is some good Jack Bauer agents, says Bill Clinton.

Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently no longer think torture has a place in U.S. policy, but Bubba sure hopes a "24"-style cowboy steps up if someone ever nabs a terrorist who knows a bomb is about to blow.

The U.S. military said on Wednesday it had discovered a list of some 500 al Qaeda militants recruited to fight in Iraq from a range of European, Middle East and north African countries.

Spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner said the information was unearthed in September when a senior al Qaeda in Iraq member, called Muthanna, was killed along with seven other militants near Sinjar in northwest Iraq.

Comment: After not hearing about foreign fighters for months and all of a sudden a fortuitous list is found detailing some 500 foreign fighters coming across from Syria. Oh yeah, that evil country. It has been getting a lot of headlines lately. Wonder why?

Hunt Oil Co Chief Executive Ray Hunt said his ties to the Bush family and the Republican Party did not help his company cut a deal last month to explore for oil in Iraq's Kurdish region, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Wednesday, citing an interview with Hunt.

The government of the Kurdish region said last month it had signed a gas and oil production sharing contract with a unit of U.S.-based Hunt and Impulse Energy Corp.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has been in the news lately trying to pretend he's had nothing to do with the slow-motion economic meltdown America is currently experiencing in the housing, job and labor market. But he is still the same old Alan Greenspan -- the one who opposes the minimum wage, and wants to drive wages in general into the ground. In fact, he admitted as much in a recent interview on Democracy Now!.

European, Asian and Canadian companies are taking advantage of the weaker dollar to buy their U.S. counterparts at a record pace, increasing investment in the United States but also raising fears about a potential loss of jobs and autonomy.

"We could be looking at the world's largest tag sale if we continue to see declines in the dollar," said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners.

U.S. medical scientists have used daisy-like plants to develop an easily ingested compound that might be used in treating leukemia patients.

The compound, developed at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York, has proven successful in laboratory studies, with clinical trials expected to begin in England by the end of the year.

The U.S. Department of Energy launched its "Change a Light, Change the World" 2007 campaign Wednesday during a Salt Lake City ceremony.

U.S. Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Kevin Kolevar officiated at the event at an elementary school, encouraging citizens to change at least one incandescent light in their home to a compact fluorescent bulb.

American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons that can cause illnesses with no cure. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

The solar power industry could see "unlimited growth" potential when production costs drop to those of conventional energy sources in some 3-5 years time, a leading producer of solar energy equipment said on Wednesday.

Erik Thorsen, chief executive at Norway's Renewable Energy Corp, told Reuters that advances in production technology and solar cell efficiency were quickly slashing the cost of producing electricity from sunlight.

A crippled cow moose in west Anchorage, Alaska is showing such a knack for survival that state biologists have so far avoided the normal course of putting her down.

The moose, which is missing about 12 inches of its right hind leg, is also nursing what appears to be a large and healthy calf, according to Rick Sinnott, the state's Anchorage-area wildlife biologist.

A Colorado Springs man pleaded guilty to felony eluding in connection with a case in which he taunted authorities. Alexander Craig, 22, entered the plea on Monday in district court, saying that he was having a mental breakdown at the time.

Police received about 10 cell phone calls during a three-hour period in March, when Craig made statements like "I'm hammered ... come get me."